The Seattle Sonics Moved; What Happened Then?

If you're interested in sports meta-issues, here's another question: does it really matter, ratings-wise, which teams are in the World Series or Super Bowl?






In 2008 the Seattle SuperSonics professional basketball team moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. The reason, more or less, was the stadium: newer stadiums have more ways to part fans with money (i.e., space for selling expensive food and beer, plus branded merchandise), which is why professional sports organizations' demands to the cities they're in usually revolve around getting new stadiums. To do this they often demand (and get) tax money; a pretty ballsy demand from a private organization. The way the teams get their way with government is their unstated threat that, if they leave, there will be backlash from fans against the mayor and other government officials for the loss of jobs from the area where the team played, as well as the emotional impact of losing the franchise.

That's the fear the team ownerships play off anyway. So when the Supersonics left Seattle, what happened?

There's a whole documentary about this, Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team, embedded below. First, there was a referendum passed that essentially disallowed any taxpayer supported stadium* with 70% voter approval. That wide of a margin is amazing in itself; and in fact around the country any time these kinds of discussions have happened in the open, taxpayer opinion has been similarly negative. And this makes sense, because it's been proven, by economists, in impartial peer-reviewed journals, that sports stadiums do not help their local economies. Of course, they do help the franchise owners, but it's not taxpayers' job or desire to line the owners' pockets. Literature fans will recognize writer Sherman Alexie in the documentary but his and others' argument that capitalism always ends up redistributing taxpayer dollars to the wealthy is transparently irrelevant ("but everybody else does it!"); most taxpayers don't mind as much if that wealthy person is going to be creating jobs, and again: professional sports arenas do not create jobs.



So when cities do cave in to professional sports groups and give them our tax money, why? Are they just delusional about the job-creation prospects? Or is there backroom corruption? That's possible of course, but what's certain is that voters react irrationally when things happen to their favorite teams and players (remember LeBron James leaving Cleveland? Holy sheesh). In this case, Mayor Greg Nickels was defeated seeking a third term, and this was at least partly blamed on the Sonics' leaving. You can imagine the NBA distributing a copy of the story of Nickels' unsuccessful run directly to the mayors' offices of every NBA-hosting city in the U.S. The Supersonics weren't even that popular as sports franchises go.

So what's the point of all this? Lots of us, sports fans and otherwise, recognize that it's not the taxpayers' jobs to keep the Chargers or Niners or whoever in our town. When a local team tries to shake us down for a new stadium - and it's when, and not if - that's when the taxpayers (and the mayor as our representative) have to send a clear signal not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out. We have to remember that the sports teams are private organizations that are playing hardball with our cities trying to make money, and when they leave, it's to make more money, and they don't care that they're going to ruin childhoods. And most importantly, we have to remember, when the next election rolls around, that the mayor stood up for our interest. Otherwise we can't complain when the mayor spends our tax money on facilities for private businesses that only enrich the owners, and not the rest of us.

*To be clear, what the referendum said was that any taxpayer investment had to produce positive returns, which is basically the same as disallowing it, and is certainly how the average voter thought about it.

People Who Want New Stadiums Are Quite Often Worthless, Unpleasant, Stupid

Seattle told the Supersonics to get lost last decade, in a widely praised move against a pro team that thought they were entitled to tax money. (The same thing happened to the San Diego Chargers more recently.) When councilmembers dared vote against the entitled yahoos who wanted to build another stadium, the deviants came out of the woodwork. I think attorney Jason M. Feldman should be singled out as a great example of these sad bitter losers, who took the time to email the dissenting councilmembers and said this:

I can only hope that you each find ways to quickly and painfully end yourselves. Each of you should rot in hell for what you took from me yesterday...Please don't misunderstand me. I TRULY pray for nothing but horrible things for each of you moving forward. You have made this world a worse place by whoring yourselves out to the highest bidder. Please Please Please do the honorable thing and end yourselves. Each of you are disgraceful pieces of trash that deserve nothing but horrible outcomes.

Turns out that Feldman was suspended from his state bar after a client alleged he sexually assaulted her. That such a gentleman would comport himself in this manner is, I know, shocking! Kidding, he's an ass-face with poor impulse control and went out of his way to be a jerk so he should suffer.

Fortunately, voters across the country have figured out that stadiums are bad, bad UNDERperformers as investments, and/or as tools to bring outside tourist dollars into a city. That is to say, if there were a little league of investments, you'd have to have a heartbreaking talk with stadiums and their parents and say, "I'm sorry, but little Stadiums here just isn't cut out for this game, and not everyone gets a trophy."

Olympic Stadiums are Bad Investments Too

In a Bloomberg piece Megan McArdle asks why Olympics-hosting countries are building new ruins (nice). Think she's kidding? Here's a stadium built just 12 years ago for the Athens Olympics.



Above is from Getty Images; actually from 2 years ago, so this was after only a decade. Looks like it's been a real boon to the people of Athens! McArdle goes on to detail the very bad, no good risk:benefit of hosting the Olympics. Actually it's inaccurate to call it a "risk" because we know what's going to happen. There will be massive cost overruns for facilities used once, and no tourism benefit: "According to The Economist, 'Beijing and London both attracted fewer visitors during their summer Olympics in 2008 and 2012 respectively than they had in the same period a year earlier.'"

Why is this a problem? Well duh, because those massive costs are paid by the taxpayer, and end up as public debt around their necks, with no economics benefit (except maybe to the contractors who build the stadiums on the public dime). Does this sound familiar? It should. There have been many studies of professional sports stadiums in the U.S. and how they have little to no benefit for the local economy. The San Diego Chargers have been talking out of both sides of their mouths about this for a while, trying to get taxpayers to pay contractors and team owners: "It will benefit the city economically! Wait, people have now seen the evidence that it won't? Well then you OWE it to the Chargers because of their winning tradition, be a first class city, blah blah blah!"

People do get wise to this nonsense. In Seattle people organized to stop the Supersonics from fleecing them, the Brewers left their stadium in Chandler, AZ (much to the benefit of Chandler's economy!) and in Oslo they just got disgusted with the ridiculous demands of the Olympic Committee for their 2020 bid, and told them to [redacted] themselves. Among the Committee's demands: "A meeting and cocktail party with Norway’s king before and after the opening ceremony, with the royal family or Norwegian Olympic committee paying for the party." Added sports reporter Anders Christiansen: "'People are skeptical about sport politicians driving around in limousines. That’s not very Norwegian.'" Not very rational, period! "Soon after the list was published, the Norwegian government announced that it was withdrawing its bid."

The Chargers Stadium: Suddenly They Want to Talk About Intangibles

Below: as Chargers fans explain, even if a stadium isn't actually a good investment, there are much more important things on the line here - like the winning history and most of all pride of this successful organization which we just can't afford to lose.


from network54.com
The Chargers want a new stadium in San Diego. The Chargers have traditionally argued that asking for taxpayer money is justified, because stadiums are a good investment. Actually, "argued" is a strong term; more like, they've repeatedly said it quickly, out of the side of their mouth in a press conference with no follow up questions.

Unfortunately for the Chargers and the NFL more generally, this discussion has generated open debate, and the facts that keep surfacing are consistently clear: stadiums are bad, bad underperformers as investments, and/or as tools to bring outside tourist dollars into a city. That is to say, if there were a little league of investments, you'd have to have a heartbreaking talk with stadiums and their parents and say, "I'm sorry, but little Stadiums here just isn't cut out for this game, and not everyone gets a trophy." From an article at the St. Louis Federal Reserve website:

Very little evidence exists to suggest that sporting events are better at attracting tourism dollars to a city than other activities. More often than not, tourists who attend a baseball or hockey game, for example, are in town on business or are visiting family and would have spent the money on another activity if the sports outlet were not available.5

Economists Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist have examined the issue in depth and argued that, as a general rule, sports facilities attract neither tourists nor new industry. A good example, once again, is Oriole Park at Camden Yards. This ballpark is probably the most successful at attracting outsiders since it is only 40 miles from the nation's capital, where there is no major league baseball team. About a third of the crowd at every game comes from outside the Baltimore area. Noll and Zimbalist point out that, "Even so, the net gain to Baltimore's economy in terms of new jobs and incremental tax revenues is only about $3 million a year—not much of a return on a $200 million investment."

(To stress the point - BALTIMORE IS THE BEST CASE SCENARIO FOR A STADIUM! 3 million a year for 200 million? What is this, socialism?)

So what does this mean? It means if you still want a new stadium you have to abandon the old approach. The pro-Chargers commenters on articles like this excellent one in the Union-Tribune are suspiciously astroturfy. Suddenly, it's all about "History! Culture! If you disagree you're not a real San Diegan!" That's typically the turn a discussion takes when all the facts are against you. (And if you seriously want to take that angle - San Diego is a city for winners. WINNERS. By that I mean, NOT the Chargers. You don't fit here guys!)

The thing to remember is that governments know that there are people who, let's be blunt, will bend over and do whatever they had to in order to keep their heroes from leaving the city or they'll cry their little eyes out, and these people would oblige the rest of us to do the same. And these people show up at election time, as the mayor of Seattle once found out when the Supersonics left. Let's not let this happen again. If you oppose government subsidies for the Chargers, then at election-time, reward the politicians who represented your views. Otherwise, why do you expect them to listen to you?

More reading if you need more data:


The consensus among economists is to oppose sports subsidies

The history of taxpayer funding of sports stadiums